Wednesday

FRAMINGHAM – For more than a year, if you wanted your favorite Springdale by Jack’s Abby beer, you had to go the Clinton Street taproom and drink it at the barrel room.

That’s about to change. Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers will begin distributing its Springdale beers on Feb. 1, making it available throughout the area in stores.

“People ask us all of the time when we can get our beer in ‘X’ location, and we wanted to share it,” said Springdale general manager Joe Connolly. “Our goal was to start doing this in about a year - it just took a little longer. We just wanted to wait until a responsible time to share beer and when the beer was ready to share with the world.”

This week, in preparation for the wide release in February, Springdale sent kegs of some of their sour beers or IPAs to a few select beer locations that have been strong supporters of Jack’s Abby and Springdale. They will be popping up in better beer bars in the coming days and weeks.

Springdale will start with three year-round beers, including its Pearly Wit and Brigadeiro Breakfast Stout. There will also be a yet-to-be named pale ale. Also to be distributed will be a rotating IPA selection – Springdale has several, including AmiRite?, So Anyway… and Just Sayin’.

Those beers will all be available in four-packs of 16-ounce cans, Connolly said.

Springdale, which Jack's Abby started in order to concentrate on barrel-aged sour beers, will also release several sour beers in stores. They will be available in 500 ml bottles.

“It’s always been our intention to be a player in New England in terms of sour beers,” said Connolly. “We offer a unique approach to the style. We’re built to be a hospitable place to go and have a few sour beers without them stripping the enamel off your teeth. That’s just not our style.”

Connolly said the sour releases will be a mix of fruited sours such as Kriek Mythology and Apriculture, as well as non-fruited sours.

Springdale is a unique position compared to other breweries with products first hitting the market. Unlike others, Springdale is not a standalone brewery – Jack’s Abby owns them and brings the expertise they’ve developed over the past six years to brewing the Springdale beers.

The fact that they had the barrel room and Jack’s Abby’s beer hall right next door allowed Springdale to work on the beers for a year and dial in the recipes to exactly where they wanted, rather than have to get them out to the market to keep a brewery afloat.

“The advantage of waiting a year to do this is to make sure we can make the same sour beer repeatedly,” said Connolly. “We’re trying to be as efficient as possible.”

It also allowed Springdale to build up a following and to determine which beers its customers enjoy the most.

“It’s not to say we used the space as a proving ground,” said Connolly. “We’re in a super unique position that our ownership and our facilities allowed us to do it in a way that many breweries cannot. We were able to figure out the kinks to make the beers taste how you want them to taste, and make it repeatedly.”

Springdale currently has several hundred various wine barrels, as large as numerous larger wooden “mini-foeders,” which will equal about 150 barrels (a barrel contains 31 gallons) of beer. They will be made up of vessels used for different spirits, allowing the brewers to create different sours.”

“We can do it on some scale that a lot of others can’t,” said Connolly. “It’s a luxury product, but it’s going to be a pretty accessible price.”

Norman Miller is a Daily News staff writer. Email him at nmiller@wickedlocal.com or call 508-626-3823. Check out the Beer Nut blog at http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/section/blogs01?taxid=646&start=2. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RealBeerNut and on Facebook at facebook.com/NormanMillerBeerNut.